Fender Telecaster Grave Robber Goes to Jail

[The Smoking Gun via Gawker] What happens when you ask to be buried with your Fender Telecaster, proudly made in Fullerton? You tempt people into robbing your grave. That's what happened in Wisconsin, when a cemetery worker "allegedly removed a valuable Fender guitar from the casket of a 67-year-old Army veteran who died last week and had told family members that he wanted to be buried with the instrument, which was his 'pride and joy,' according to court records."

As the story goes, a funeral director told Steven Conard and another cemetery worker, James Lang, that "a guitar was in the casket with Randall's body," but Lang told deputies that Conard opened the casket and remarked, "That's a Telly, a really expensive guitar. I have to have that guitar. It's too expensive to be in a crypt." Sometime during the day, the Telecaster was found missing, and Conrad told on Lang. The guitar was then returned to Jourdan's kin; Conard remains in custody at the Brown County jail.